Thunderbirds are Go! (Day Eleven Writing 101)

1966 was a very good year in my hometown it was the year England won the World Cup and everyone was excited about that.

I was twelve years old and from what I can remember I seemed to play from dawn till dusk getting up to all sorts of mischief. I might be looking back through rose coloured glasses but from what I can remember the summers were sunnier and the days longer that they appear to be now.

I lived with my parents and my younger brother in a house that had three bedrooms and unusually for the time a bathroom with an indoor toilet, (which was a novelty to many of my friends). Now not many people will remember the trip down the garden to the toilet late at night with a torch, but I can assure you it was every bit as terrifying as it sounded when you were twelve. So when we moved into our new house that was one tradition I was pleased to see the back of.

Now in 1966 central heating was the domain of the wealthy and to stay warm we had large roaring fires in every room which made you warm at the front but because of the draughts cold at the back.

The only luxury I can remember was the TV that sat in the corner of our front room that we were allowed to watch until 6.00 pm when the adult programmes started. Now the big programme that my mates and myself watched and never missed an episode of was Thunderbirds, to us it was the ultimate in adventure and had a group of brothers all doing great stuff to help save people who found themselves in peril.

I look back at those programmes now and think they look a bit dated but back in the day I can remember pretending to be Scott Tracy in Thunderbird One. Now back then we didn’t have anything but our imagination and our bikes to play on, but riding around the neighbourhood making jet noises and swooping in on anything that needed rescuing was great fun.

We even had our token girl in our gang only because Lady Penelope was cool and had a pink Rolls Royce with guns. Our lady Penelope had a pink bike and we always seemed to be picking her up of the floor because she couldn’t steer her bike very well.

It seems strange that Thunderbirds has recently been updated and with the latest animation techniques seems to have reinvented the programme for a whole new audience, which is never a bad thing.

The only down side is the fact it doesn’t quite live up to the programmes I remember enjoying as a twelve year old, but then again its 48 years since the last time I watched it and what was fiction then in most instances has become a reality today, but try explaining that to your twelve year old Grandchildren. They look at you as though you lived in prehistoric times.